How much longer do I have?

[Wolf Island Diver]

That's exactly it--when initially deciding on a Gladiator, I drove a diesel Rubicon and liked how the engine performed. The pentastar was flawed when released, but the manufacturer was/is committed to sticking by that motor and over a decade plus, has refined it to a point where it is basically bulletproof when one accounts for how many of them are on on the road. I recently came across a somewhat local firecracker red 2023 Rubicon diesel on CarGurus and thought "what if?"--it is fully loaded, including ACC and the upgraded cross stitched leather interior. Nice looking truck and it was marked down over $10k off of MSRP. Called the dealership and the sales rep let me know that it was still under the stop sale and they couldn't even allow a test drive. We talked for a bit about how Jeep had seriously screwed up the engineering with that motor/option and then basically is now walking away from it leaving everyone else holding the bag. He told me one dealership is sitting on 40 ecodiesels--forced to pay interest on vehicles that they are not allowed to sell with zero support from the parent company that produced them. I love the idea of the option, but the reality of living with it is an entirely different matter. Jeep is clearly abandoning the project. Five or six years from now with 80-90k miles will there be any competent support from the dealerships/manufacturer if it takes a year to resolve an issue on a brand new one?

They’re not abandoning it because of engineering problems or because they couldn’t make the platform work. It’s been working in Ram and Jeep since 2014. This Bosch problem is a real pain, but Bosch is the dominant player in the industry and they’ve made other products that have issues. This could happen to any vehicle given a poor design like this. The Pentastar is not a safe harbor from failing vender components. This specific pump is in Ford and GM engines and has the same issue. VM Motori makes the Duramax, too btw. This isn’t some failure of Jeeps engineers to make this platform work and VM Motori has been making engines since the 1940s. There have been numerous recalls on the Pentastar. There’s a stop sale on the manual transmission right now.

Jeep is leaving this diesel for 2 reasons that have nothing to do with its reliability, quality or performance. The diesel was a path to meeting CAFE requirements. Outside the US small diesel trucks are the default. Americans have this macho thing with diesels and associate big trucks and big diesels like Cummins. Diesel cars have never sold well here. I think FCA thought it was time that this would change. That light duty diesels in light duty trucks would take off. Remember GM also believed this. Toyota was talking about bringing their diesels here. Ford was going to do one. Jeep got lucky by association with RAM and got the diesel. But then diesel gate happened and then FCA had its own cheating scandal. In the regulatory environment in the US, small diesels come with a lot of expensive NOx baggage that doesn’t happen in Europe or Asia or Australia or South America and Mexico. Stellantis, a different company than FCA, didn’t see the light duty diesel future panning out in the US.

Simultaneously Jeeps hybrid became their most popular powertrain. I don’t think they expect that. They dipped their toes in the water with an honestly kinda weak effort and consumers reacted positively. The regulatory environment shifted towards electrification. They’re abandoning the diesel for hybridization and electrification and frankly it makes both financial and technical sense. People need to realize that the gas engine option on Jeeps and gas engines in general will soon become the lower spec choice with hybrids and EVs to become the preferred upgrade. The Pentastar is going to keep kicking around because they’re not going to invest money to design another v6 ICE. But in a few years no one’s going to want one of those. If a hybrid can used to boost torque I will have to seriously consider one of those if/when it makes it into the gladiator. If I can drive around with 4 cylinder mileage and then add electric motor torque on demand then there’s no point in either the Pentastar or the diesel.

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